Language, sofeware lesson lecture

1 LANGUAGE/SOFTWARE LANGUAGE/SOFTWARE 2 3-1 Hardware 3-1 Hardware  Hardware is the machine itself and its various individual equipment.  It includes all mechanical, electronic and magnetic devices such as monitor, printer, electronic circuit, floppy and hard disk. 3 3-2 3-2 Software Software • Software refers to the set of computer programs, which are used in applications and operating systems.  It is the collection of programs, which increase the capabilities of the hardware.  Software guides the computer at every step where to start and stop during a particular job.  The process of software development is called programmin g. 4 3-3 3-3 SOFTWARE TYPES SOFTWARE TYPES  1- Application Software :  Application Software is a set of programs for a specific application.  Application software is useful for word processing, accounting, producing statistical report, Graphics, Excel and Data Base.  programming languages COBOL, FORTRAN, C++, VB, VC, Java 5  2- System Software 2- System Software : : • When you switch on the computer the programs written in ROM is executed which activates different units of your computer and makes it ready for you to work. • This set of programs can be called system software. • System software are general programs designed for performing tasks such as controlling all operations required to move data into and out of the computer • System Software allows application packages to be run on the computer. 6  Computer manufactures build and supply this system software with the computer system.  DOS, UNIX and WINDOWS are some of the widely used operating system software.  Out of these UNIX is a multi-user operating system whereas DOS and WINDOWS are PC-based.  We will discuss in details DOS and WINDOWS in the next section. 7 3-4 3-4 programming languages programming languages  programming languages specially developed so that you could pass your data and instructions to the computer to do specific job  There are two major types of programming languages, Low Level Languages and High Level Languages  Low Level languages are further divided in to Machine language and Assembly language  High Level Languages are, for scientific application FORTRAN and C languages are used. On the other hand COBOL is used for business applications. 8  Machine Language is the only language that is directly understood by the computer. It does not needs any translator program  The only advantage is that program of machine language run very fast 3-5 Machine Language 3-5 Machine Language 9 3-6 3-6 Assembly Language Assembly Language  It is the first step to improve the programming structure. You should know that computer can handle numbers and letter.  The set of symbols and letters forms the Assembly Language and a translator program is required to translate the Assembly Language to machine language  This translator program is called ` Assembler 10  Advantages:  Assembly Language is easier to understand and saves a lot of time and effort.  It is easier to correct errors and modify program instructions.  Assembly Language has the same efficiency of execution as the machine level language  Disadvantages: • Assembly language is machine dependent. A program written for one computer might not run in other computers with different hardware configuration.